Communication and Buy-IN; are your customers and prospects fully engaged or merely notified?
I was training a group of 10 delegates a couple of weeks ago. They were a great bunch, very professional and clearly dedicated to the company. However, like many, they felt that contacts; customers or prospects; were not fully engaged with them. Their contacts would not respond promptly; weeks would go by with no response to a question, query or quote. Apparently, some quotes of considerable value were still outstanding and they had assumed that they had not been successful. Three things immediately sprang to mind:
FOLLOW-UP, ASSUMPTIONS and COMMUNICATION!
Any question, query or quote goes cold very quickly unless reinforced with a follow-up. They may be short of a single fact or simple clarification. ‘For a ha’porth of tar, the ship sank’ as they used to say….apparently.
This team had worked hard to offer what they felt the customer needed, but had stopped short of the follow-up. Looking keen and following up within a small number of days will only give good impressions and emphasise that yours is the company to engage in business.
This level of attention has three key benefits:
- It shows you’re keen
- It keeps you up to date with customer intentions
- It speeds up the sales process
Without effective follow-up, others will step in to take the business. The ‘personal touch’ will be lost and engagement will transfer to others who express more interest in working with them.
Rule 1 – follow-up, if you don’t, others will.
In each case assumptions have been made. It could be you are assuming you have little chance or the e business is not due to be placed yet. Maybe they have assumed that your lack of follow-up means you are less interested in the business. There are many other common assumptions and whichever side is making them, they are very dangerous and likely to damage your prospects of winning any business.
Rule 2 – never make assumptions; ASK! Summarise, clarify and confirm every time.
How you generally communicate can make a huge difference to the progress and success of the business you are chasing. I asked the team of delegates what forms of communication achieved the highest emotional connection or engagement, the most ‘buy-in’ from the customer. We produced this list in descending order. I then asked how they would usually communicate and in what proportion. The results speak for themselves:
Engagement % % usage of communication methods
Face to Face 90 5
Skype 50 5
Phone call 30 5
Letter 10 5
Email 5 90
The company relied almost wholly on email, but admitted this was the least effective when wanting to engage with customers or prospects. Despite the hard work and best of intentions, they had notified instead of engaged.
Rule 3 – if you claim to be a friendly and personable company to work with, don’t rely heavily on email for your communication. If in doubt, ask them, see them, call them, write to them; why not use two methods, write then call, or visit then write etc?
If your customers matter; and of course they do; work more closely with them to understand their need, to fulfill their need and to win the business. I am sure this team will now move forward by following up every contact and proposal as they certainly deserve the greater success it will bring.